Lahore: Pakistan evacuated at least 150,000 people in areas along three rivers in its agricultural heartland to escape flooding, as neighbouring India warned it plans to release excess water from a dam, officials said on Tuesday.
The arch-rivals have been ravaged by intense rain and flooding in recent weeks. The release of excess water in addition to heavy rains threatens to further flood parts of Pakistan’s Punjab province, which serves as the country’s breadbasket and accounts for a large part of its food supply.
The nuclear-armed nations have been in a tense stand-off since a brief conflict in May, their worst fighting in decades, and any flooding blamed on New Delhi could inflame ties.
Pakistani officials said they received a second warning from India on Monday that it intends to release water from the rapidly filling Madhopur Dam, on its side of Punjab province.
The forced evacuations started on Friday ahead of the Indian warning and have continued to date, said a spokesperson at Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority.
The total number also includes at least 35,000 who had left voluntarily after multiple early warnings since August 14, she said.
Army troops are also taking part in the evacuation drive.
India routinely releases water from its dams when they get too full, with the excess flowing into Pakistan.
An Indian government source said they had not mentioned a specific dam but the intense rain led them to share the second warning with Pakistan through diplomatic channels. Asked if more warnings could be issued, he said it was possible.
New Delhi had warned Pakistan on Sunday that large volumes of water would flow into its waterways due to the heavy rainfall.
Three rivers – Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab – flow into Pakistan from Indian territory. Those rivers are seeing medium to high flooding, the Pakistani authority said on Tuesday, warning of more intense rains in Punjab and Pakistan’s Kashmir in the next 12 to 24 hours.
Mazhar Hussain, a Pakistani disaster management official, said India will release a controlled amount of water from dams in the coming days. Hundreds of villages situated on the embankment of the three rivers have been evacuated, he said.
Sixteen villages are at risk of flooding, said Deputy Commissioner Saba Asghar Ali after visiting Pasrur city near the Indian border.
Arrangements for food, medicines, washrooms, and other necessities have been made in the relief camps set up in the area, she said, adding that there may be a need to relocate a population of 5,000 and 1,450 livestock to safer locations.
“Due to climate change, eastern rivers are experiencing heavier rainfall compared to the past,” said Kazim Raza Pirzada, the Punjab province irrigation minister.
AGRICULTURAL HEARTLAND
Pakistan’s northwest has been hammered by intense floods, accounting for half of the 799 people killed this monsoon season.
The northern region of Gilgit Baltistan has suffered accelerated glacial melting, while the southern city of Karachi was partly submerged last week.
Now the worst of the flooding is threatening the eastern Punjab province, home to half of Pakistan’s 240 million people.
The province produces the majority of Pakistan’s staple crops and the areas along the three rivers boast large tracts of fertile agricultural lands.
The warning from India on Sunday came after New Delhi put in abeyance a decades-old treaty with Islamabad on sharing water from the Indus River network. India suspended the treaty after blaming Pakistan for a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir, which sparked the hostilities in May.
Islamabad denied any involvement.
An Indian official said on Sunday that the warning was shared on “humanitarian grounds”, and not under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, following heavy rains in the northern Jammu and Kashmir.
Floods in the region have killed at least 60 people this month.
(Reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Additional reporting by Krishna N Das in New Delhi; Editing by Saad Sayeed and Sophie Walker)
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